With an average revenue of $2 million per day for the Give 1 Get 1 program, that is 100 thousand XO-1 laptops sold in 10 days. Half of these are going to developing nations.
The OLPC Foundation is extending the Give 1 Get 1 program until the 31st of December.
I think it’s great that Microsoft is investing millions of dollars in making a thin version of Windows XP for the XO-1 laptop. That is just really great of Microsoft.
What is really sad, is that Nigeria and Libya are getting relatively low volumes of bloated Classmate laptops. They chose to get a few tens of thousands of bloated Classmate laptops instead of going for the much more sustainable and future proof XO design.
All in terms of power consumption, usabillity, wireless, screen readabillity, software optimization for unbloatedness (both Linux Sugar and whatever “XP Lite” that Microsoft can do).
Classmate and Eee on the other hand are nothing else then totally regular laptops with the regular unoptimized structure of a bloatware-laptop with a totally conventionnal DVD player 7″ LCD and Flash memory instead of the HDD. On top of that there is no way Classmate and Eee are going to be sold at $200 in quantities of millions. Intel is working on a AMD Geode alternative, and that is GREAT and I hope Intel and AMD push the limits of low power and cheap price for a X86 processor, but Intel should really not insist with the ULV based Classmate and Eee.
So what for Intel if they are not part of XO-1, Intel can be part of XO-2 and can “catch up” within the next few months with Menlow and Diamondville.
But the basic thing is will Intel and others in the PC industry such as Asus and Dell stop thinking they should keep PCs and Laptops expensive and bloated forever. The cheap laptop revolution cannot be stopped now, this society is too open for that to happen now. So Intel should stop delaying OLPC, cause every day that goes by, millions of kids are missing out on being part of the information society and learning about everything.
Actually I do think Microsoft will open-source Windows XP at some point within the next couple of years at one point or another and give licences for it away for free, and that will be cool. At least there will be no other way for Microsoft to compete with Linux for cheap laptops.
Microsoft will keep Vista closed and expensive, but XP should become open and free.
That would bring so much good PR to Microsoft and they can still invest in Vista for business and for the expensive laptops and PCs, Microsoft has to get onto other businesses such as online applications, online advertising, video games, portable and wearable computers.
The One Laptop Per Child is the most awesome technological revolution in the works and its mass production is just about to start in China.
There is the Buy 1, Get 1 program and the Give Many programs that are also just about to launch while OLPC will deliver the laptops in priority to Uruguay, Peru and other countries that have confirmed orders for large quantities of it. The goal being that as many children as possible should get laptops as soon as possible.
Jepsen says it’s true, as the story suggested, that final assembly of the first batch of mass-produced laptop—to begin soon at a recently expanded Quanta Computer factory in Changshu, northwest of Shanghai—was originally envisioned to begin in October, and will now start sometime in November. But neither the One Laptop organization nor Quanta ever claimed that production would be begin on a set day—so it’s a stretch to call the situation a “production delay.” Says Jepsen, “I think we had hoped to start mass production in October, but we were never focused on starting on a certain date. We’ve always just wanted to make the product as good as we can…I am certainly not aware of any promises that we are going to miss.”
And while Jepsen says she’s happy that audiences are so interested in the details of the One Laptop project, she points out that the One Laptop organization doesn’t work like a traditional manufacturing company, with detailed business plans or Gantt charts showing the dependencies between each part of the project. “It’s much looser and more collaborative, kind of in the spirit of the open-source movement—and yet I’ve never worked at a company where things have come together more smoothly,” she says. “Everyone thought this was impossible three years ago.”
(…)
“What is mass production, anyway?” asks Jepsen. “Is it when you put together the motherboards, or is it when the operators on the line screw together the plastic parts on a conveyor belt? You can say that that’s when it really becomes a laptop—but we designed it so that five-year-old kids in Nigeria can screw it together. In a way, the work is already largely done.” Jepsen points out that Quanta, the world’s largest laptop manufacturer, recently doubled the size of its Changshu manufacturing plant so that it could begin production of the XO-1, which will be the first product off the new lines.
Jepsen says she was surprised by the complaining tone that spread across the blogosphere yesterday in response to the Reuters story about the supposed delays. “On some level I’d just like to say to everyone, ‘Chill,’” she says. “But on the other hand, it’s clear that people are really interested in the process, and in learning about how a laptop is manufactured.”
Source: http://xconomy.com/2007/10/25/one-laptop-organization-to-world-chill/
I’d like to hope that Intel will have a very positive attitude with OLPC going forward. Firstly not to “compete” XO-1 by dumping low volume of Classmate-1. And not dumping EEE-1 in low volumes eigther.
Intel should contribute competing with AMD towards the low power fanless CPU for XO-2, there should be an even lower power CPU than LX-700, with DCON, instant-resume and all perticular innovative and extremely usefull technologies of OLPC integrated, which are not integrated in anyway in Classmate-1/EEE-1. LX-700 type of processor could run Windows XP, so there isn’t an argument for more power unless it can be made for cheaper and by lower power consumption.
Then Intel could provide cheap low power Mobile 802.16e WiMax for XO-2, if they can develop a WiMax Mesh network technology, a low-power WiMax chip that has its own ultra-low power CPU and memory just as the Marvell WiFi Mesh chip of the XO-1. Then it should be researched if WiMax can replace WiFi or if it should be a secondary wireless access to add.
Intel has dozens of other cool things to contribute, but always keeping in mind that the price of XO should decrease towards $50 by 2009.
The High-K/Metal Gate Research and Development, the multiple-cores, the built-in graphics acceleration, lots of other things Intel has knowledge and ressources to make, it should be evaluated which of these technologies can be contributed to lowering the cost and lowering the power consumption.
I believe there are enough people on this planet for all kinds of computers. There will still be alot of people who need to encode videos faster, play new 3D games, process graphics and animations, those people will continue to need the expensive computers. And then there is an enormous untapped market in the developping and in the western world for people who will need very low cost and very low power computers. It’s inevitable now, the upwards spiral in price/power consumption is not applicable any longer. So Intel is welcome to be part of that kind of future, it’s gonna be a fun for everyone, with low margins and large volumes.
Finally, Intel joins the One Laptop Per Child project.
XO-1 will start mass production as planned this September or October and will use AMD Geode LX-700 chips as planned.
The first generation school servers that will be shipped to schools using the XO-1 will use Intel chips.
This is what I think we can expect Intel could provide to the OLPC project:
- Contribute large amounts of R&D to make the successor to the LX-700, it should consume even less power while providing as reliable or more reliable x86 processing.
- XO-2 should integrate DCON better (the technology that can refresh the image on the screen while suspending the main processor most of the time when it’s not needded)
- XO-2 should add low power Mobile WiMax 802.16e as a second wireless technology in the laptop with the WiFi Mesh 802.11s. Unless Mobile WiMax can be made to work in ad-hoc mode as a Mesh thus it could replace WiFi. Intel is said to be very much invested in Mobile WiMax technology. Mobile WiMax in the 700mhz UHF band might be the best solution, and a deployment using the FON flowerbox model would provide free wireless broadband blanketing very quickly and very cheaply for whole countries.
- XO-2 should optimize suspend and resume even more, make it faster, better and more reliable.
- Find a way to add E-Ink technology to the laptop for better readabillity and lower power consumption in e-book mode, possibly as a second rollable screen that can be pulled over the LCD.
- Work towards commercializing OLPC technology in the whole world. Profit made by commercializing OLPC technologies should be used by the OLPC foundation towards lowering the price of the XO-1, XO-2 and XO-3. A result of this might be that we will all be able to buy $200 laptops soon running Linux, lasting 20 hours on a battery, being sunlight readable, integrating Mobile WiMax and WiFi Mesh, providing instant-resume and running the main processor without a fan. It is everyone in the world who needs to use the OLPC technology for lower power computing in terms of protecting the environment.
Free at video sites:
I also posted this to http://olpc.tv/2007/06/01/opera-browser-and-ogg-theora-in-html5-specs/
Yesterday I got on the frontpage of Digg with this story: OLPC on 60 Minutes: Intel is evil, and a few days ago I was also on the front page of Digg with The first children have received their 100$ laptops.
The cost of the Classmate is closer to $400. Though Intel is offering only to OLPC launch states in maximum bunches of 10 thousand units at $180 each. Thus Intel is taking a $220 loss per laptop. Intel will only sell at that price in relatively low volumes, you can be sure Intel won’t commit to deliver a million laptops per country at that price.
I have tried both at http://olpc.tv (even though those were not the latest versions), and I can tell you that while OLPC XO-1 is 100% made of innovation, the Classmate is nothing more than a lower spec conventional laptop with an Intel ULV processor (like the one in the UMPCs) and with a 2GB flash memory instead of a 20GB HDD (which doesn’t cut price more than about $30). Intel might as well give out low spec full screen and full keyboard sized laptops in batches of 10 thousand units, it wouldn’t cost Intel much more. What Intel is doing is making people think that the Classmate is innovation, just because it’s the same size as the OLPC XO-1, while Classmate is 0% innovation.
OLPC XO-1 is better in terms of power managment (12h battery life with backlight and heavy use compared to 2h battery life on the Classmate, the Classmate consumes nearly 10 times more Watts per hour of use), the dual-mode high resolution screen of the XO-1 is sunlight readable and usable for e-books (Classmate is just a conventionnal and expensive 7″ LCD, just like the ones on the expensive UMPCs) and the software of the XO-1 is made for education and is full of innovation for that use, fully open source thus constantly being optimized and new location specific apps can be added (while Classmate is nothing but a normal laptop running Windows XP, Intel did nothing to improve or adapt any educational software for the Classmate running Windows XP, the Classmate comes with no other educational software than what is currently available on Windows XP and on the Internet).
OLPC XO-1 can run Windows XP, but Microsoft has on purpose not wanted to confirm that, because Microsoft also is hoping that OLPC XO-1 will not start mass production as planned. But you can be sure that XO-1 hardware can support a customized slimmed down Windows XP and OSX, once it is mass produced, you can be sure that Microsoft and Apple will be able to relatively quickly deliver those customized unbloated and free-licenced or $3-licenced OS to the OLPC schools on a 1GB SD card.
I have launched a video-blog for OLPC XO video news at: http://olpc.tv
The OLPC XO is the laptop computer on the right, while the computer on the left is an old fashion bloated Intel or AMD-based computer running old fashioned and bloated Red Hat Linux OS (better than Microsoft software though). This picture is posted by Christoffer Blizzard.
- OLPC XO consumes much less power than old fashioned Intel/Microsoft laptop computers. Probably something like… 10 times less power.
- OLPC XO has a better, higher resolution and sunlight readable screen, much better than traditionnal LCDs on Intel/Microsoft computers.
- OLPC XO is ten times cheaper than Intel/Microsoft computers.
- OLPC XO comes with faster bootup, faster Linux OS, more optimized open-source OS and applications unlike Intel/Microsoft computers that forces Windows XP and proprietary software on us all.
- OLPC XO has developped a power-saving way of shutting down the AMD Geode processor and storing screen informations in a buffer most of the time, when the CPU is not required, a thing Intel/Microsoft computers do not have with their traditionnal Intel CPUs.
- OLPC XO comes with revolutionnary Wi-Fi Mesh chip that has its own processor, consuming less than 0.5 watts, maybe even as low as 0.2 watts to be running 24 hours a day for 5-6 days before recharge, constantly being able to forward packets for other OLPC XO or other Wi-Fi Mesh appliances. Something Intel/Microsoft computers provide non of. Intel/Microsoft computers consume lots of power having to run the main CPU all the time even when it is not needed. On a Intel/Microsoft computer, to use any Wi-Fi application, the main CPU has got to run, and sometimes also the LCD, making the Intel/Microsoft computers useless to use it as always-on VOIP devices, waking up on incomming VOIP/IM/Email/RSS or other incomming packets.
What happened since this computer revolution is underway? My theory is that some rich companies together with Nicholas Negroponte’s team at the MIT have finally decided to invest in ending the bloated Intel/Microsoft, also called Wintel monopoly. One based on forcing bloated software onto the public, bloated software requiring expensive supercomputers costing a 1000$ or more just to run basic applications. Of which 95% of normal computer users only need to browse the Internet together with some other basic features like Internet telephony, Internet messaging, Email notifications and Multimedia playback, all of which does not require expensive supercomputers to run at standard resolutions.
What will happen I think in the very near future, thanks partly to the amazing OLPC XO project, is that suddently very cheap computers will be replacing the traditionnal Intel/Microsoft platforms, I am in fact hoping that I can soon replace my year-old 2200$ Acer laptop computer running Windows XP on a dual-core Intel processor, that I will be able to replace it with a much better performing 300$ Linux computer, having optimized processing power for basic applications that I use like browsing/VOIP/IM/Email, and I will need to have the optimized HD video DSP co-processor, a removable iVDR slot for inserting any 2.5″ hard drive up to 200GB, with Wi-Fi Mesh, HSDPA and WiMax modules.
Who among Google, IBM or Dell are first going to be mass-producing optimized and commercial Linux solutions inspired by the innovations provided by the OLPC XO project? I think that they must all be hard at work on it, and we will see the transition in our society very soon from Intel/Microsoft platforms to Optimized-low-power-CPU with optionnal cheap and low-power DSP co-processor for HD video processing running free and open-source Linux software.
Nicholas Negroponte keynote filmed nearly completely from my seat in the audience, I got as close as I could to the stage, as there was lots of VIPs and cameras were not allowed at the WCIT keynotes, I couldn’t get any closer. During WCIT, I approached Nicholas Negroponte and I asked him if he had tried to integrate WiMAX yet, to which he replied WiMAX is overhyped but could come in the next generations, and I asked him if video works and he said that of course it works, that those laptops can do everything.
DivX HD: Play, Download (604mb)
Google Video: Play, GVI, Page
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